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Jury awards former TV anchorman $1.4 million Posted by The Oregonian newsroom September 7, 2006 15:45 Print | Email A Multnomah County jury awarded a former Portland TV anchorman $1.4 million in damages from Oregon Health & Science University for a back surgery that left him partially paralyzed in 2003. Members of the jury also sent a note to the judge asking if they could require the doctor to apologize to Ken Ackerman, who says he has never completely recovered from the surgery. His attorneys said the 45-year-old man lives with his right arm constantly in pain. Ackerman has gradually regained mobility but says he has lost most of the fine motor skills in his right hand. He sued the hospital and doctors for $5 million. The jury awarded him $412,000 in economic damages and $1 million in punitive damages .Ackerman went to OHSU Hospital on Dec. 15, 2003, for surgery to repair a bulging disk. OHSU's head of neurosurgery recommended that Dr. Alex West perform what was expected to be a 45-minute surgery. Ackerman's Portland lawyer, Richard Rogers contends that Ackerman suffered a "penetrating spinal cord injury." Three weeks after the surgery, Rogers said, Ackerman learned that a resident who had never before performed or assisted in that type of procedure conducted key portions of the surgery. Rogers said he still isn't sure which doctor completed the surgical approach but, he said, "Whoever did it went too deep." The hospital did not dispute that Ackerman "clearly has deficits linked to the surgery" but that those deficits were not caused by medical malpractice, negligence or mistakes. The hospital's attorneys argued that they were "a known risk of the surgery." Ackerman had been a figure in Portland television since 1989, most recently as co-host of "AM Northwest" on KATU (2). Ackerman left the station in 2005. OHSU doctors are shielded by a state law that limits their liability to $200,000. The Ackerman suit was the first case to come to trial since last month when the Oregon Court of Appeals overruled the cap in another malpractice case. OHSU will probably appeal.
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